Textbooks

Venus Mason wasn't wearing her uniform at the Los Angeles Police Department's press conference outside the Starbucks on Crenshaw Boulevard. With her bright blouse, matching necklace and auburn-tipped dreadlocks, she looked more like the folks watching from the sidewalk than like her fellow police officers behind the microphones. That seemed fitting to me, given Det. Mason's role in the drama that brought us together to mark the arrest of a local man on a murder warrant. This was no high-profile case, like the Grim Sleeper.

Two dozen Haitian students manage a ragged unison in their stab at English. " Today we go to school," they pronounce, more or less as one. Their instructor approves and gives the next cue. "In school I will learn to write." "In school I will learn to write," the students echo. "The teacher will help me." "The teacher will help me," the Haitians offer in return. On this day, the teacher, Justin Purnell, sits 1,300 miles away in Asheville, N.C. The students are packed into a bare-bones classroom in Port-au-Prince, watching and answering via video on a laptop computer propped in front of them.

Ronald Gottesman, a retired USC English professor who co-edited the "Norton Anthology of American Literature: Volumes I and II" published in 1979, died May 10 at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center of complications from pneumonia, USC announced. He was 77. Gottesman taught American literature and American studies at USC from 1975 to 2001. As a scholar, he specialized in American novelist Upton Sinclair, film studies including the work of Orson Welles and movie depictions of King Kong, and violence in American life.

So, it wasn't the end of Lakerdom as we know it, after all? In the good news for the Lakers, there will be a tomorrow, or at least a Sunday, that won't be in Oklahoma City. Loath to even think about going back there for Friday's Game 6 trailing 3-2, without their old assurance that Kobe Bryant could save the day, the Lakers made a ferocious defensive stand, turning the poised young Thunder players into toddlers up past their bedtime in a 111-87 rout. With his sore knee improved enough that he asked to guard Russell Westbrook, Bryant put on a clinic in cerebral basketball, scoring 13 points with seven assists.

Taking sides Re "On Immigration: We must take decisive steps; our economy and budget are at risk," and "On Immigration: We need common-sense solutions, without divisive rhetoric," and "Fighting back on immigration," Editorial, March 27 Your editorial on immigration says that furious Republicans declared bipartisanship at an end after the Democrats passed healthcare reform. Which bipartisanship was that? The bipartisanship that led one senator to say that if the Republicans could kill the healthcare bill, it would destroy the Obama administration?

When Texas' conservative-leaning Board of Education voted for new social studies standards this month, parents, teachers and lawmakers far beyond the Lone Star state -- particularly the liberal ones -- took notice. With the changes, Texas' curriculum is likely to de-emphasize the concept in U.S. history of separating church and state, and the influence of Thomas Jefferson on 18th century world history. It would also cast a positive light on conservatives, such as Phyllis Schlafly and the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Henry Molaison lived in relative obscurity, but he possessed one of the world's most famous brains. Known to generations of scientists and psychology students as H.M., Molaison lost the ability to form new memories after surgery removed part of his brain and, by agreeing to be studied over several decades, transformed the way we understand memory. H.M. died last December, but science isn't done with his brain. Molaison, a Hartford, Conn., native who in life often expressed a wish to do what he could to help people, donated his brain for research.

Several politicians in South Korea and Japan have begun exploring the possibility of a joint history textbook between their nations and China. But given the lingering differences over issues ranging from past wars to current territorial claims, the proposal faces numerous hurdles. Members of South Korea's ruling Grand National Party met informally in Seoul this month with counterparts from the majority Democratic Party of Japan. One of the main topics was whether a joint history textbook could now be developed with government cooperation.